TransferWise vs. Revolut: A Swiss perspective

Yes, Wirecard does that. You can buy a card for EUR 10 or something like that at a gas station or at Lidl, and then you can top it up with cash right there at the cashier.

This is not my experience. I use the Revolut cards on a daily basis in UK and Germany. The situations where offline authorization would be necessary are really rare for me. On trains, planes, at unmanned gas stations, some occasional vending machine on vacation. It happens like 3 times a year or so.

Donā€™t get me wrong, I am all for cards with offline functionality, but at least in my experience the majority of businesses does accept Revolut cards just fine.

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Same here in France, I am using Revolut card on a daily basis and no real issue so far :slight_smile:

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@Doppjunat

actually, they are quiet common in germany, switzerland and austria (not sure about italy and france)ā€¦

mostly, they are used for getting teenagers a possibility to pay with visa or mastercard. also, they are nice ā€œ2nd cardsā€, especially when buying them in foreign currencys (eg. switzerland -> a prepaid for EUR)ā€¦

BUT - fees to get one (at least in CH) are very high, so itā€™s just easier to get a real credit-cardā€¦

Thatā€™s not been my experience. Sure for day to day use in the UK there is little or no difference. But have regularly been declined online where a full Debit card like Curve has been accepted. (Eg Uber is a case in point).

Also Iā€™ve been travelling for the past 3 weeks in Asia and Australia. My Revolut Card has been declined a couple of times already so far, with my Curve Card (with Revolut as the underlying funding card) being accepted.

And itā€™s common outside Europe for merchants to apply differing surcharge percentages to debit cards and credit cards. And Revolut so far has Not been showing up as a Debit card on POS terminals. Which is irritating. Not so the full Debit card from Curve. Making it at times cheaper to use than Revolut.

So yes. Iā€™d like the opportunity to have a full Debit card from Revolut.

TransferWise: Lean app, but basically no statistical tools.
Revolut: Cool statistical tools and a lot of customization possibilities in the app.

TransferWise 6 - Revolut 3

TransferWise: No top-up limits, but very generous card limits of up to 10ā€™000 GBP per month.
Revolut: Low initial top-up limits, onerous process to get them raised. Risk of blocked accounts.

TransferWise 7 - Revolut 3

TransferWise: Website with extended account functionality and backup access in case of app problems.
Revolut: No account functionalities on website. No backup in case of app or phone problems.

TransferWise 8 - Revolut 3

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Shame that TransferWise doesnā€™t have a community where you can post your results.
To me itā€™s all down to personal preference. My experience with :r: does not equate to yours so scores would be more 50:50.
Both services have plus and minus and as long as they meet my needs Iā€™m happy.

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Exactly what @Powie said. You should choose your service depending on what you need. For me Revolut works perfectly, I travel from time to time but I rarely use any other currency besides EUR. I joined :r: mostly because of the app and all its features and to support a really innovative fintech. I do understand however, if someone in the UK who doesnā€™t travel that much prefers Monzo or Starling. To be honest I would love to try out Starling and maybe even Monese. TransferWise or N26 never really interested me.

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Interesting. Was it at a small merchant or a large one?
Did you get any clarification from the support team?

I had no issues in South Korea and paid with the card wherever it was acceptedā€¦

Iā€™m not a power user of any of my bank accounts/apps and I travel a lot but most countries I go to use EUR. TransferWise never really caught my attention because I donā€™t like their app. I think Revolut is ahead of all the other ones when it comes to having a simple yet intuitive app that allows me to organize my budget and spending.

I mentioned Monese because they have phone support, something that Revolut should definitely consider. The waiting times are really scary right now.

Iā€™ll be giving Starling a try when they launch in my country, they are about to launch in Ireland and they plan on expanding to rest of Europe after.

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I would only bother with non-essential inquiries :wink:

Just write support everything relevant at once and if something isnā€™t essential, itā€™s totally fine if they respond with something days later.

For me, I recently moved from the UK to mainland EU for work and a friend who had done the same suggested Revolut to help manage money between two countries and two banks.

It looked great, the app was good and at least when i got into it, support was quick, detailed and straight to the point.

I do a lot of exchanging currencies from EU/SEK/GBP and using my traditional bank, they wanted to charge me a flat fee to transfer any foreign currency to or from them, no matter how much. Having Revolut basically not charge me a dime (if done during the week) is the ultimate best option for me.

I looked at the other ā€œdigitalā€ banks after I had already invested into Revolut and noticed that they either specialised in UK services or UK people going on holiday abroad, or they charged me for transfers. So no reason to swap from Revolut.

Iā€™ve personally never had any issues with the service, Iā€™m not a power spender, I donā€™t get my salary sent to Revolut, I donā€™t transfer enough money to buy a house through Revolut either. I wouldnā€™t trust the service with that amount personally but thatā€™s not a dig at Revolut, I wouldnā€™t do that with anything other than a traditional bank and even then Iā€™d grimace at the cost theyā€™d charge me to do so. Only because they have insurance, I donā€™t have a lot of ā€œfree moneyā€ I can afford to lose and in my mind, itā€™s a hell of a lot easier to chase them legally than a digital tech start up company.

I know and understand we need these big power users of Revolut that do all the above to help grow and prove the system and Iā€™m so grateful for them, but in my life/situation, I can not afford to risk having complications with any amount of money, so I donā€™t and neither should anyone here that complains about Revolut ā€œruining their lifeā€ when issues arise. Always have a back up, always use funds you can afford to be delayed, until everything is perfect, sorted and smooth which it isnā€™t for any of the services today, even traditional banks have their bad days.

Revolut wonā€™t steal your money, they wonā€™t scam you, but sometimes they may require some more time to jump through hoops or to explain things, or even more info from you to clarify things. Let them and help them if you truly want to support them and see this industry change for the better :smiley: it wonā€™t always feel like an uphill struggle.

  • Just my two cents, Iā€™m not anti any other services, I just support the ones that work for me :smiley:
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Good that youā€™re having a good experience, but Iā€™ve been both stolen from and scammed by revolut. I had money being charged from my account, and the charge showing as being from online merchants when in fact was from revolut by mistake they say. Then I had also a situation with a ghost physical card that after all never even existed. No wonder I didnā€™t receive itā€¦

Probably more incompetence than malice, but you better be vigilant. These kinds of issues really need to stop happening

At a risk of this being slightly off topic;
Iā€™m sorry to hear that, were these issues resolved? I hope so, Were they explained and communicated properly? Was this early on in Revolutā€™s service or recently? Do you continue to use Revolut after this? If so, why?

All services may and probably do have issues similar to this, even traditional banks do, but we have a forum to voice the issues and concerns here making it more visible so it appears more unreliable or more common than traditional bank issues.

I really hope your issues were sorted out and apologised for where necessary, I wouldnā€™t like it either if what you described happened to me.

The money that was taken was fortunately refunded, but not without first revolut insisting I talked to the merchant who supposedly had made the charge and of course didnā€™t know anything about it. I also had to wait about 5 days from first identifying the problem and contacting revolut until I was refunded.

As for the card I never got any refund for the express delivery or explanation for what happened with them sending the card to the wrong address, however Iā€™m willing to let it slide as it is an infinitely lower amount than the issue above

These issues both occurred last month, and I do still use Revolut as Iā€™ve already invested a bit of money in cards and premium plan and I believe the issues donā€™t occur due to malice but rather incompetence, though Iā€™ll bail if stuff like this happens again

Hey guys,
Iā€™ve read somewhere that TW offers full debit card unlike Revolut, Iā€™m owner of both cards but couldnā€™t see any difference between these 2 cards, I tryed to find an answer on this forum or internet but nothing clear to meā€¦ Please could someone explain me what it really means?
Thank you in advance
Regards

Usually a prepaid card like revolutā€™s is not accepted to warranty things, like when renting a car or pumping petrol.

Besides some legal differences about how they are related to bank accounts, the main practical difference is that Debit cards have a different service code configuration to allow offline verification. They cary a separate offline limit, often something around 100 bucks, that is basically a credit. When there is no online connection, a payment is ā€œdrawnā€ from that credit and then settled the next time the card goes online.

Technically, a card with the same ā€œDebitā€ style service code configuration but an offline limit of ā€œ0ā€ is possible. This card would behave like a prepaid online only card, but would have higher acceptance in cases where merchants decline prepaid cards out of principle. There is no real reason why a car rental should not accept a prepaid card when it carries sufficient funds to block a security deposit.

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Hey @Frank,
Thanks for great explanation. So do we know if Revolut put this limit to ā€œ0ā€ (like TW in fact, because itā€™s also not possible to take fuel at ā€œofflineā€ pump for ex.) or if itā€™s definitely not a real Debit card?
But anyway, the answer is not that important finallyā€¦Fingers crossed for some change about this restriction one dayā€¦

Thx

Unfortunately, no. I havenā€™t seen a post anywhere about the UCOL/LCOL configuration.

http://emv.maxontour.com/2018/07/01/transferwise-debit-mastercard-2018/

Also: when I checked my TW card a while ago, BIN databases reported ā€œissued in Spainā€. That changed to ā€œUnited Kingdomā€ now. Makes more sense.